What’s the Deal with Net Neutrality?
If you follow technology news in particular, you’ve probably heard a lot recently about the idea of ‘Net Neutrality.’ So, in a nutshell, what exactly does this term mean? Net Neutrality is about keeping the Internet open and unbiased. Traditionally, all data on the Internet has been treated equally without any particular company’s services receiving priority. However, Internet service providers such as AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon would like to change that.
As the Internet begins to be used for more extensive purposes like video downloads and telephone calls, Internet service providers are looking for ways to give their own services — or perhaps the services of another company that pays them a premium — a “fast lane” on the Internet. This could mean, for example, that if Comcast created a video download store for TV shows they could make their videos download faster than TV shows from Apple’s iTunes video store. A law for Net Neutrality would prevent this, requiring that Internet service providers treat all data on the Internet the same, preventing the creation of “fast lanes” for preferred services.
A couple weeks ago, a bill for Net Neutrality was defeated in the U.S. Congress. One of the key opponents of the bill was Senator Ted Stevens, the Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee. His speech before the Senate (audio link) is quickly growing in popularity across the Internet due to the Senator’s clear misunderstanding of how the Internet works, describing it as a “series of tubes”:
“They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a truck. It’s a series of tubes.
“And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it’s going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.”
If anything, Senator Steven’s remarks have generated a lot of publicity about Net Neutrality, causing more people to become aware of the issue.
For more information about Net Neutrality, and to find out what position your Senator is taking, visit SaveTheInternet.com, a Web site created by a coalition of organizations that are fighting to keep the Internet free and open.